2 Sisters Detective Agency(69)

Three more rooms revealed nothing more. Vera pretended to read a chart on the wall about visitation hours while she thumbed the safety off the pistol inside her bag. She didn’t want to use the weapon, but she was running out of time, and she knew that if Jacob returned earlier than she expected, she would need to be ready. Her hope was to slip in and out, leaving the kid for her father to find, pale and lifeless in the bed, still warm to the touch. Vera had always thought it was wonderful in movies when the parent arrived just seconds too late to save the child. The closer the margin, the better the tragedy.

She turned into the next room and found a bedside cabinet crowded with cards and flowers, the bay where the bed should be sitting empty.

She went and snatched up the nearest card.

Dear Beaty, We hope that you…



Vera threw the card on the floor.

Outside the room, an orderly in a blue uniform was cleaning off a whiteboard with a cloth and spray.

“I’m looking for my sister.” Vera smiled, her hand on the gun in her bag. “Could you please help me?”





Chapter 95



Ashton saw Rhonda Bird being driven away in an unmarked cop car, then stood and looked around him at the scene that remained: a squad car pulling out slowly to join the traffic heading in the other direction on the 405, with the people who had paused to gawk now resuming their activities. Baby was standing beside the open door of the second squad car while a silver-haired officer tried to corral her into the vehicle.

Two things struck him. The first was that everybody seemed to have completely forgotten his existence. This meant that whatever Rhonda and Baby were being arrested for, it had nothing to do with the Midnight Crew. The second was that the officer at the front of the remaining squad car had slid into the vehicle, leaving her partner alone to deal with getting Baby into the back of the car, and the old patrol cop was struggling with the outraged teen.

Ashton gathered up his pile of snacks. The temptation to walk away pulsed in him, heavy and urgent. He could walk to the edge of the gas station and disappear down an alley into the streets, get a cab home. But all that waited for him out there was a killer who had only him and Vera left to track down.

At least here he had an ally. He had thought Vera would protect him, that she and the other members of the Crew had been the kind of team who would be there for him when things got scary. He’d been wrong. Maybe it was time to start hanging out with a different crowd.

Ashton walked up behind the older officer and gave him a nudge on the back of the ankle with his shoe.

“Hey, man.”

The officer turned.

“Catch this.”

Ashton threw all his snacks at the officer at once. Two bags of Ruffles, a Hot Pocket, a can of nuts, and two doughnuts. A crackling explosion of color and crinkled confectionery packaging. He didn’t need to tell Baby what to do. While the old man struggled to catch the barrage of treats, the teenagers bolted.





Chapter 96



I sat quietly for a moment. My father, an undercover operative? Whatever was clogging the traffic suddenly released and we were on our way again.

“My dad was—”

“Not a hero,” Summerly said. “Before you go too far down that track. He was not working with the police out of a sense of honor and justice and service to the community.”

“Oh.”

“We had a tracker planted in a shipment of drugs coming up from Mexico, and your dad received it,” he said. “We got him dead to rights. He agreed to work with us in a sting on Martin Vegas. All he wanted was to stay out of jail and take care of Baby, so we cut him a deal.”

“Oh, he didn’t want to stay out of jail to care for Baby,” I sneered. The anger was boiling up inside me, hotter and hotter. “He wanted to stay out of jail because they don’t serve whiskey there. Is Perry Tuddy in on all this?”

“Of course,” Summerly said.

“So all his bullshit about enjoying being locked up by the cartel was just a lie?”

“Nope,” Summerly said. “That guy is a genuine nutcase. He gets himself locked up by the cartel almost intentionally because he enjoys it for some weird reason. But we approached him after he was last released and asked him if he wouldn’t mind us placing a tracker on him too, to see where the cartel took him. And, yeah, even though he likes being locked up, I still felt conflicted about it. What kind of jerk lets a guy rot in a shipping container in the middle of the desert just to make a case?”

“I don’t know. The same kind of guy who would sleep with a woman just to make a case?”

Summerly jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The car’s bumper barely missed scraping the concrete barrier at the side of the road. He turned and stared at me.

“You can’t honestly believe that’s what I did.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s hard to believe you have any genuine feelings for me while I’m cuffed in the back of your police car, Dave.”

“You’re only back there for show,” he said. “How would it look to Vegas’s guys if I tossed you the keys and we both swung through Miffy’s for a shake?”

“Just about as bad as it does for us to be sitting here by the side of the road having a heart-to-heart.”